by Zane Grey
“My God, they’re on the rampage again!”
“On the other side. Bad!”
“Umpumm, boys,” yelled Red. “Thet’s not cattle. No stampede. I know thet roar, by heaven! It’s the river!”
Sterl marveled that he had not been as quick as Red to recognize the low, steadily increasing roar which had filled his ears. All in a flash he was back along the Cimarron, the Purgatory, the Red, the Brazos—all those Western rivers that he had known and battled in flood. His hair stood up stiff under his hat.
“Fellers, thet big dry wash has been a river, raisin’ all the time we been buckin’ this storm an’ herd. But thet roar you heah now is a flood.”
“Red, we’ve seen driftwood in the trees along the bank ten feet above our heads. We’d better pull leather out of here.”
“I should smile. It’s good the camp is on that high bench. Gosh, do you heah her comin’?”
A mighty, seething, crashing, bumping roar bore down from the black night. The rain had let up somewhat so that it was possible again to hear it distinctly. The riders loped their horses back toward the far side of the basin, intent on reaching higher ground. They encountered a two-foot wall of water, rushing in at that end. Somewhere above the basin an overflow from the river had met it head on. They waded their horses through to the rising slope beyond, from which vantage point they halted to listen to the flood roll on, and perhaps to see the mob of cattle swamped. At first the three riders shouted to each other, but presently gave up the attempt at being heard. The deafening crest of that flood could only be calculated to have passed by when once again it was possible to hear.
Gray dawn broke hours sooner than Sterl had imagined it would. The rain had ceased except for a drizzle, but the overcast sky predicted more and continuous downpour. The mob of cattle stood heads down, knee-deep in the overflow. The stream that had half filled the basin had dwindled to a ribbon of muddy water. Across the basin and the flat beyond, the main stream raced by full from bank to bank. Green trees and logs floated by. In the middle of the river huge waves curled up to break back upon themselves. A solemn splashing roar seemed to glide on and on down the valley.
It was a changed world, drenched to the bone. No vestige of the dry hot spell remained to give its evidence. The wildfowl and four-footed rivals for the water holes were conspicuous for their absence.
“Red, give us a count,” Sterl said grimly.
“Wal, I was jest about to,” replied the cowboy. “About four thousand haid there now. Ormiston an’ his bush-rangers have sloped with half our cattle.”
“Bush-rangers!” yelled Larry. “Good grief! Last night I thought you were off your heads.”
“Shore, we were. Let’s ride in an’ check up. All the rest of the drovers have ridden in for tea, or they’re drowned…or gone.”
“Gone?” Larry echoed, furious and baffled.
Sterl kept his gloomy calculations to himself. The worst was yet to come. He dreaded it.
They rode into camp. Friday met them and took Sterl’s horse. The aborigine’s blank visage and silence were ominous. Sight of half a dozen of Leslie’s Thoroughbreds, haltered to trees, reminded Sterl that he had not seen Slyter’s horses on the way in. Bill had a fire going, with tea brewing. The smell of fried bacon permeated the damp air. No womenfolk were in sight. Over at Dann’s camp there was less activity, but a group of drovers stood as if stunned.
Slyter passed to and fro like a maniac confined in a cell. Some of Leslie’s best race horses were gone, including Lady Jane and Jester.
“What the hell you beefin’ about, boss?” queried Red curtly. “Thet ain’t nothin’ a-tall. Wait till you get the load.”
Sterl, still silent, hurried to change into dry clothes, refill his belt with shells, and get out his rifle. He made sure that the oilskin cover was tight.
Red came in, cursing Slyter through his clenched teeth. “What you think, Sterl? Thet hoss-mad geezer doesn’t even know about the loss of cattle. An’ damn little he’d care if he did. Pard, we gotta hand it to Ormiston. It’s a cinch he stole those race hosses.”
“But you swore that wasn’t anything at all,” rasped Sterl. “Rustle. We’ve got a job. And my God, am I ready for it!”
They hurried out to the fire where Bill gave them hot damper, tea, and bacon. They ate standing, eyes alert, thinking hard, waiting for the denouncement. Larry came running awkwardly on his bowlegs. His face was gray, and his eyes popped.
“Hey, wait a minnit, you!” Red ordered sharply. “Get yore breath. An’ drink somethin’, whiskey preferable, before you spring anythin’ on us. Slyter, come heah.”
The drover, gloomy-faced and disheveled, stamped to the fire almost belligerently.
“How many hosses missin’?”
“Five! Leslie’s!” He repeated what he had groaned out before. “I knew that storm would rush them. But Dann ordered to concentrate on the mob. We can’t track those racers, not after this deluge. And I’ll lose them. It’ll about kill Leslie.”
“Yore hosses were stole, Slyter.”
The drover might have doubted such a statement, if it had not come from Red Krehl.
“Who? Who?” gasped Slyter, staggered.
“By thet bush-ranger you an’ Dann have been harborin’.”
Sterl broke his silence. “Keep it from Leslie, boss, if you can. Bill, rustle me some meat and bread.”
“Wal, Larry, if you can talk now, come out with it,” said Red, and he appeared to shrink as he faced the young drover.
“Two thousand head and five drovers gone! Eric Dann gone! Beryl gone!”
“A-huh. How about Ormiston’s outfit?”
“Gone, too, so Drake said. Wagons not where they were. Mob not in sight. Moved out of the way of the flood, so they say.”
“So they say!” ejaculated Red sarcastically. “Rustle, Sterl. Let’s see what Dann says.”
“Come, Friday,” called Sterl.
They hurried toward Dann’s camp, followed by the others, even the cook. Dann turned from the group of drovers. He appeared deeply concerned, but compared to Slyter his demeanor was strikingly tranquil.
“Pard, you start the palaverin’, an’ I’ll finish,” suggested Red.
“Bad going, boss. What’s your angle?”
“There was a rush during the storm. My drovers followed, but they are not in sight. Eric and Beryl must have crossed to Ormiston’s camp last night before the storm. They got held up. No doubt Ormiston moved his camp and mob back out of sight.”
“How do you account for five of Slyter’s Thoroughbreds being gone?”
“That’s more news to me. They must have rushed in the storm.”
“Mister Dann, it is our opinion that they were stolen,” returned Sterl bluntly.
Dann took that as Sterl imagined he would have taken a blow in the face—without the bat of an eyelash. “Stolen? Preposterous. Who would steal horses, when there are cattle to eat?”
Drake intervened with concern: “Boss, I forgot to tell you that the blacks, too, are all gone.”
“Good riddance. But they would not steal horses.”
Red Krehl had listened attentively to this interview, while his blue eyes, clear and piercing, had been covering the whole camp and the open beyond. They flashed back to fix upon the leader.
“Dann, I’m orful sorry I have to hurt yore feelin’s,” he bit out, cool and bitter. “You been too friendly with a bushranger who turns out to be a slicker hombre then we savvied. Name of Ormiston, which I reckon ain’t his real name by a damn’ sight. He stole Slyter’s racers. He corrupted yore drovers an’ raided yore mob. He made a sucker out of yore weak-minded brother. He….”
“You blasphemous Yankee lout…to whom not even blood relation is sacred!” boomed the leader, manifestly a preface to a mighty wrath.
“Save yore wind, boss,” snapped Red. “I’ve had real shore to Gawd bad hombres riled at me. An’ I’m pretty gawd damned riled myself! Mebbe it might help for you to see that Eri
c Dann’s wagon is gone.”
It was, indeed. Sterl knew exactly the gum tree which had shaded Eric’s canvas-topped wagon. His dray was there, its cover dripping with rain. Drake burst out to corroborate Red’s statement. The other drovers wonderingly conceded the point. That crushing blow, which obviously mystified and staggered Stanley Dann, did not by any means convince and prostrate him.
“Dann, there’s a lot to tell, when I got time,” went on Red. “I heahed Ormiston say he was a bush-ranger. An’ Jack an’ thet hombre Bedford were his right-hand men. I knowed they all was rustlers before I’d been a month on this trek. Sterl, heah, knowed it, too.”
“Suspicion I don’t listen to,” thundered Dann. “If you had facts, why didn’t you produce them?”
“Hell’s fire, Dann! No man could tell you something, much less a Yankee lout. But you gotta heah this. Ormiston is gone! An’ yore daughter went with him, either willin’ or by force…an’ so help me Gawd, I still reckon it was force!”
“Proofs, man, proofs!” raged the giant, overwhelmed by the implacable cowboy.
“Come on out along the river,” retorted Krehl. Then he whipped a strap of his open bridle around Duke’s neck, and mounted to his saddle in one long step. “Come, pard, fetch the black man. Drake, Slyter, all of you get in on this.”
Sterl surveyed the scene on all sides. The main fork of the river, some two hundred yards wide there, ran like a millrace, a yellow turgid torrent, full of driftwood and débris. From upriver sounded the dull roar of threshing waters. Below the bench upon which the camp stood, the flood had crept up over the bank. Some of the eucalyptus trees were standing in the water. Across the river, under the trees, Sterl espied one wagon, from the blackened and dismantled top of which thick smoke rose aloft through the rain. Pieces of canvas flapping from branches, boxes and bales littered around, even at that goodly distance attested to a hastily abandoned camp. Sterl did not even look for cattle.
The day was warm, muggy, but far cooler than the preceding ones. Even with tragedy uppermost in mind, not one of the trekkers, Sterl thought, could fail to feel glad for that wet, forbidding, sinister day.
A mile up the river, Red halted his horse to wait for the others to come in. At this point the grassy flat ran to the bank of the river. There was a break along here in the border of trees. Above, a constriction in the riverbed marked the rough center of the current where backlashing waves made turmoil and clamor.
As Sterl and the others reined in to line up back of the cowboy, he swept a fierce hand at the plowed-up ground and the deep trough that had been cut in the bank. This muddy swath, where grass had been trampled flat, extended fully a hundred yards up the river. A big herd of cattle had been run, densely packed, along this course, to go over the bank. Across the flood the opposite bank was sloping, and the center of its sandy incline showed a deep, broad trail of tracks where the cattle had climbed to a level. A novice at the cowboy game could have read that telltale track. Resourceful and intrepid drovers had seized a timely period during the storm to cut out a couple thousand head, and cross them before the flood had arose.
“Mister Dann,” spoke up Drake, hollow-voiced. “I never trusted Ormiston and his drovers. They weren’t friendly with us. They had a set plan, and it must have worked out true to the day they plotted it.”
Others of the drovers corroborated Drake’s opinion. All eyes turned to Stanley Dann at that moment. It had to be a realization of betrayed trust.
“It could have been a rush,” he boomed. “A rush in the storm! My drovers are with them.”
“Dann, you shore die hard,” drawled Red, halfway between admiration and contempt. “But, by Gawd, I gotta hand it to you for thet, an’ I like you the better. Only look heah…down the track aways…. There’s a daid hoss, an’ a daid drover. I’ve a hunch it’s Cedric. If yore eyes air keen, you’ll see his bright hair, almost the color of yores, Dann.”
Sterl was the only one to speed after the cowboy. But the others followed slowly, no doubt actuated by Dann’s tardiness. Some terrible thing was being beaten into his dense and trusting brain. Red had dismounted beside the prone drover, when Sterl came up, having a bit of trouble handling the iron-jawed King. Sterl did not recognize the dead horse, but horror and sorrow fastened upon him as he reined in some paces from the dead man and dismounted. He knew that wavy, tawny hair, even though it was sodden with blood and sand.
“Pard, it’s Cedric, all right, pore brave devil,” said Red, as he knelt beside the prone figure. “Herd ran him down. Trampled to a pulp, all except his haid. Look heah! So help me Gawd. Sterl, heah’s a bullet hole. Cedric was murdered before he was run down!”
Sterl likewise knelt to verify Red’s stern diagnosis. He saw plainly the hole in the back of the young drover’s head. Then he looked up to meet the flinty eyes of his comrade. His passion burned out the nausea caused by the ghastly remains of the fine boy. Then he espied the butt of a gun almost concealed under Cedric’s side. Sterl pulled it out, shook off the sand, opened the chamber. Six empty shells dropped out.
At this juncture the others, surrounding Dann, arrived to confront the cowboys, and to bend dark, fearful gaze upon the corpse before them.
“It’s Cedric, my friend!” cried Larry, leaping off his horse. He slumped down beside Sterl, wringing his hands. That was surely the first dead comrade Larry had ever seen.
“Aye, Cedric it is, poor boy!” burst out Dann, his sonorous voice full of grief. “The mob rushed over him. He died on guard!”
“Dann, a blind man could see thet,” drawled Red, whose habit was to grow cooler and deadlier as a hard situation tensely worked to its close. “It’s a cinch Cedric died on guard. But how? Thet herd run over him…trampled him flat…shore as he lays heah. But he was shot in the back of his haid…murdered…before the herd run over him.”
A hastily stricken silence fixed upon Red’s listeners.
“Dann, it is true,” put in Sterl sternly. “Here’s the bullet hole.”
“Larry, you examine thet hole,” suggested Red, as he rose to draw a scarf and wipe his bloody hands. “I don’t want no one heah to take my word. Nor Sterl’s.”
Larry, Drake, and Slyter in turn minutely studied the wound in Cedric’s skull, and then solemnly averred the boy had been murdered. Stanley Dann, with corded brow and clouded eyes, listened to them, responded as they in horror and grief at the tragedy, but he did not share their conviction of murder. He maintained that it must have been an accident, that his empty gun indicated he and the other drovers had been firing to hold the cattle back, that in the blackness and strife of the storm anything could have happened.
Red eyed the leader with amazing tolerance and respect for that hard cowboy to exhibit at such a difficult time.
“Dann, from yore side of thet fence thet is good figgerin’, an’ givin’ the benefit of a doubt,” Red said with finality. “But I know Ormiston either shot Cedric or put somebody up to it. Let’s don’t argue any more. We’re wastin’ time, an’ we’ll know for sure pretty pronto.”
“Men, fetch shovels and a ground cloth,” ordered Dann. “We’ll bury poor Cedric here on the spot of his brave stand. Keep it from the women!”
A shrill aborigine yell startled the group. Friday appeared on the highest part of the bank, gesticulating violently, in marked contrast to his usual deliberate actions.
“What the hell?” muttered Red. Then he mounted a fraction of a second behind Sterl. They raced for the black man, while the drovers pounded behind.
King covered those few hundred yards at such a pace that he passed Friday before Sterl could haul him to his haunches, sending the sand flying. Red thudded to a halt behind him. They both shouted grim queries to the black who had a long arm and spear pointing across the river. Sterl located an object crawling down a slight sandy slope. His eyes blurred. He took the object for a crippled kangaroo. But Red let out a piercing cry, terrible in its significance to Sterl.
“Man! White fella! Boss’s brudder!�
� called Friday dramatically.
Sterl wiped his eyes with steady hand.
“Look, pard. Make sure,” he said coolly. His faculties were swiftly settling for action.
“Friday’s right,” declared the cowboy. “It’s Eric Dann. Bad hurt! Face all bloody!”
Larry and Roland galloped up, with Dann and the others close behind. Friday repeated his words, as well as his dramatic pointing with his spear. Sterl, gazing across the river, had no time to look at Stanley Dann. The man across the river flopped down a sandy slope, crawled, got to his knees to wave weakly. His face and head appeared bloody, but Sterl recognized Eric Dann.
“Boss, it’s yore brother,” Red was saying curtly. “Bad hurt…probably dyin’. Ormiston has done for him.”
Stanley Dann roared out a mighty curse of mingled horror and wrath. Behind him the drovers uttered loud outcries. But so far as action was concerned they were paralyzed.
“Red, strip King’s saddle,” flashed Sterl, leaping down to sit flat and tear off spurs and boots. Just as swiftly Red threw the black’s saddle and blanket. “I can land here, some place, if you rope me.”
“I could rope yore cigarette. Rustle.”
“Hazelton, what do you intend doing?” boomed Stanley Dann.
Sterl had no time for the leader then. Leaping upon King, he seized the bridle and wheeled the black up the river. At a hard gallop he covered the few hundred yards of open bank and hauled up short of a heavy growth of brush through which he did not choose to ride. The flood here came swirling to the edge of the bank. At the plunge the water would be deep. A few yards of the current ran swiftly. Farther on the yellow waves curled back, crashing upon themselves. Logs and brush went sweeping by. They constituted the menace of swimming that river. Sterl gazed upstream to pick out a place less thick with driftwood. The river curved beyond a short distance, at a point where the rapids began. The muddy torrent appeared criss-crossed with débris, logs, and brush.
King champed his bit and snorted. He knew what he was in for and wanted to go at it. The drovers, led by Red, arrived at this juncture. With them was Leslie Slyter, riding bareback. Her big eyes resembled burnt holes in a sheet. Red looked up the river.
